Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE SECOND PARLIAMENT BEILDINGS AND TEMPORARY QUARTERS. 1813-1832. iOWARO the close of 1813, Lieutenant-Governor Sir Gordon Drummond arrived at York, and assumed military and civil control of the Province. Parliament was called for the following February, the first session being held in the ball room, as it was called, of Jordan’s York Hotel, which stood on King-street near Berkeley-street. It was a first-class house of entertainment in its day, and the legislators regarded their temporary quarters as something palatial. The records of this first session after the war naturally contain many references to that event. The Lieutenant-Governor, in his speech from the Throne, voiced
his most devout gratitude to the Divine Providence, which seems to have manifested an especial protection to the righteous cause of our defence against an enemy unprovoked and implacable, who, at the moment they were exulting in the assurances of their commander that the conquest of the Canadas was achieved, were arrested in their progress to invade our sister province, and their collective force discomfited by a handful of British troops, who drove them in dismay to seek refuge on their own shores. With no less gallantry in another quarter a small band of British soldiers attacked and carried by storm the Fortress of Niagara, the strongest and most formidable position they held on our frontier. In advancing to this enterprise the troops beheld with indignation the smoking ruins of the town of Niagara, which an atrocious- G policy had devoted to the flames. Resentful of the misery brought upon the innocent but too credulous inhabitants, who had remained until the last moment under a promise of protection to their persons and property, the army inflicted a severe retal…
